


Damnatio Memoriae

by skywalkersamidala



Category: I Medici | Medici: Masters of Florence (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Family, Gen, Post-Canon, but with a sense of closure (at least i hope so)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-27 00:55:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20751662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skywalkersamidala/pseuds/skywalkersamidala
Summary: Lorenzo always told Piero that his uncle Giuliano had been his godfather.





	Damnatio Memoriae

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking ahead to season 3 and specifically whether Francesco's presence will still be felt at all (god i hope it will be), and it got me wondering if they're gonna mention anything about how he was Piero's godfather bc that's a pretty big deal! But the more I thought about it, the more I was like, would Lorenzo even want to admit that he made Francesco Piero's godfather? Thus this fic was born.
> 
> The s2 timeline is fishy, but although historically he would've been 6, in the show I think Piero is still a baby at the time of the conspiracy (seeing as Bianca's baby is still a baby and that baby was born pretty soon after Piero), so I've gone with that and thus he doesn't remember Giuliano or Francesco at all.
> 
> Russian translation by arthurs_lake here!: https://ficbook.net/readfic/8749280

Lorenzo always told Piero that his uncle Giuliano had been his godfather. Clarice, usually such a proponent of honesty, in this instance went along with the lie without protesting or even questioning him, as if she knew without him having to say so how much pain it caused him to think about the actual memory of Piero’s christening. To remember his actual godfather.

Lucrezia never let slip the truth either, though on the few occasions it came up, Lorenzo thought he could detect resentment in her eyes as she looked at him. Like she still hadn’t forgiven him for passing Giuliano over, no matter how many times he’d explained during Clarice’s pregnancy that it was politically expedient to bind Francesco to their family _now _and Giuliano could have his turn as godfather for the next child.

Lorenzo still hadn’t forgiven himself either.

Of course, there had been many other guests in attendance at the christening who knew the truth too. But Lorenzo didn’t worry about them, because even in the unlikely event that Piero would strike up a conversation about his godparents with one of them, no one had dared whisper the name _Pazzi _in Florence since that day in April.

So the lie became the truth. Until Lorenzo fell ill.

It was the gout that had plagued his father, and he was younger now than his father had been, only forty-three, but he welcomed death. He had buried his father, his brother, his mother. He had buried his wife and sister and daughter all in the same year.

He had buried his best friend, except he hadn’t. He’d cut his body down from the noose and let it be torn to shreds by the rabid mob below, let the pieces be paraded through the streets and thrown in the Arno. He hadn’t buried him, had denied his soul from finding rest.

Perhaps that was why the dreams started coming as Lorenzo’s body fought for its life even though his soul had been ready for death for years now, ever since that day in April. Or were they dreams? They might have been waking hallucinations; Lorenzo was too feverish now to tell if he was awake or asleep.

_“Damnatio memoriae,” _a hauntingly familiar voice said in the quiet darkness of his bedroom one night. “For the Romans, it was the worst punishment of all. To be forgotten. To be erased. Like you’d never existed at all.”

Lorenzo slowly turned his head and saw that distinct profile silhouetted in the light of the single candle by his bed. “Francesco,” he said, and when he remembered this encounter later, he took his calmness as a sign that he had indeed been dreaming.

“Hmm. Not forgotten after all, then.”

“How are you here? Am I dead?”

“Not yet, but are you still truly alive either?” Francesco said. “No, you’re somewhere in between. In limbo. Like me.”

“What do you mean? You’re dead,” Lorenzo said. “I ordered it myself.”

“Yes. But I was not buried. So my soul wanders.”

“Surely your soul is in hell.”

Francesco moved into the light, and Lorenzo was startled to see a smile on his face. But it was that sarcastic smile Lorenzo had always hated, not the true one that lit up his eyes. “Wherever I am, you will join me there soon enough,” he said by way of response.

“Then I’m going to hell,” Lorenzo said, still oddly calm.

“Did I say that?”

“You said I’ll join you, and if there is any justice, you are in hell. So.”

“The souls of Volterra cry out for justice too,” Francesco said.

Lorenzo looked away, that old pain and guilt washing over him again. “I’ll go anywhere as long as my brother is there,” he said.

“Which one?” Francesco said, so quietly, but it made tears well up in Lorenzo’s eyes and spill over onto his cheeks as he remembered that year they’d been happy. _You have a new family, a new life. A new brother, even, _Giuliano had said. _Offer Imola to your new brother._

Lorenzo had been a blind fool, ignoring the blood of his blood in favor of a man whose veins flowed with lies, whose grandfather had killed his grandfather’s brother, so why should it have been any different in their generation? Why hadn’t Lorenzo learned his history? Why couldn’t he have predicted what would happen?

Why hadn’t he treated Francesco better? Made him love him too much to betray him? He was like a brother to Lorenzo, why hadn’t he treated him better? Then again, he hadn’t treated his actual brother very well either.

“Why are you here?” he said, his voice trembling. “To torment me?”

“To ensure that a long-buried truth is unearthed,” Francesco replied.

“About what?”

“My godson.”

“You have no godson,” Lorenzo said, with more ferocity than he’d had the strength to speak with in weeks.

But Francesco merely raised an eyebrow. “No? Then what baby did I hold over the baptismal font all those years ago?”

“You lost the right to call him godson,” said Lorenzo. “You took his uncle from him, and you would have taken his father too. Yet you still dare to call him your godson? You would have made him fatherless, like you were. How could you bring yourself to orphan another child the way you were orphaned?”

To his satisfaction, there was finally a trace of emotion on Francesco’s face. Just a trace. “You don’t want to leave this life with lies staining your soul,” he said. “Tell Piero the truth.”

“That his uncle’s murderer was his godfather? It would destroy him.”

“Perhaps. But he has the right to know.”

“Why do you care so much?” Lorenzo asked. “I doubt it’s out of concern for my soul. Why is it so important to you that Piero know the truth?”

Another flicker of emotion, stronger this time, longer. “There were not many things I truly loved in my life,” Francesco said after a loaded pause. “But that child was one of them.”

“Then why did you try to destroy his family? Francesco?”

But Lorenzo was alone in the room now, and wondering if he had always been.

* * *

Were they visions caused by his fading grip on reality? By his guilty conscience? Or was he genuinely straddling the gap between the living and the dead and therefore able to speak with both? Lorenzo didn’t know, but for whatever reason, Francesco continued to visit him.

“Why can’t I speak with Giuliano instead?” Lorenzo would ask. “Or Clarice? Bianca? My daughter Luisa? My parents or grandparents?

“Oh, they are all resting well,” Francesco would reply. “None of them have unfinished business with you.”

“What does that mean?”

But Francesco would just shrug mysteriously.

It was frustrating, lingering on the threshold like this. Lorenzo wished he could just die. “Who’s Francesco?” he heard his children whispering once, looking at him with a mix of heartbreak and fear, like they thought he had gone mad.

Maybe he had.

“It’s better that you not know,” Sandro said, shaking his head sadly. Sandro, the last one left now that Giuliano and Francesco and Clarice and Bianca and Simonetta were all dead, now that Guglielmo was exiled and Novella living a new life, and hopefully a better one, far from Florence.

Lorenzo didn’t belong in this world anymore. It had moved on from him. Why couldn’t he just die?

“It’s because you’re holding on,” Francesco said. “You have to let go.”

“Let go of what?”

“The lie.”

“I can’t,” Lorenzo said, tears trickling down his cheeks. “I can’t.”

“Would it really hurt him so much? He was a baby then, it’s not as if he remembers even Giuliano, let alone me.”

“I can’t let him know what a fool I was,” Lorenzo said. “To have trusted you.”

“It was I who was the fool, to have trusted you,” Francesco replied. “To have believed for an entire year that what you called an alliance between us was really that, rather than a thinly-veiled excuse for me to do whatever you wanted while you never lifted a finger to help me in return.”

All the times Lorenzo had flippantly discussed ways to prevent the Pazzi bank from getting the upper hand over the Medici bank, right in front of Francesco. How stupid was he to have believed that Francesco would love him more than his own bank?

How stupid was he not to have loved Francesco more than _his _own bank?

And yet, every time he started to feel the shadow of guilt for how he’d treated Francesco, he was right back in the Duomo, seeing Giuliano covered with blood and stab wounds, dying in his arms. Lorenzo should have done better by Francesco, yes, but he hadn’t driven him to that. Francesco only had his own wicked soul to blame for his sins.

“Do you regret what you did to Giuliano?” Lorenzo said.

“Do you regret what you did to me?” Francesco countered. In the flickering candlelight, for a second Lorenzo thought he saw a ring of bruises around his neck.

“I regret that you gave me no choice,” he said.

Francesco snorted. “Always the politician. Spinning your words so that nothing is ever your fault.”

“You killed my brother,” Lorenzo said. “What would you have done? If I did to Guglielmo what you did to Giuliano?”

“I would have strangled you to death with my bare hands,” Francesco said matter-of-factly. “But you were too cowardly to kill me yourself.”

Lorenzo closed his eyes, exhausted. “If that’s the case, then why are you here tormenting me rather than the man who actually put the noose around your neck?”

“Like I said. Unfinished business.”

“I’m _not _going to tell Piero.”

“Tell me what?”

Lorenzo opened his eyes and saw that his bedroom door was opening and a figure entering. He squinted, and Piero came swimming into view. “Tell me what, Father?” he repeated as he sat down on the edge of Lorenzo’s bed.

“Look at that,” Francesco said. “A perfect opportunity.”

Lorenzo sighed. “Leave me alone, Francesco, I beg of you. Did you not torment me enough while you were alive?”

“There’s no Francesco here,” Piero said, his tone uncharacteristically patient and gentle.

“He’s right there,” Lorenzo said rather desperately, raising a weak, trembling hand to point at where Francesco was lounging against the wall with his arms folded and an infuriating smirk on his face. “Right there. Can’t you see him?”

Piero shook his head, looking so tired and so sad. “There’s no one there, Father.”

Francesco’s smirk became even smugger, if that was possible. Lorenzo wouldn’t be surprised if he was fully capable of manifesting himself to Piero but choosing not to, just to make Lorenzo look like a deranged old fool. Bastard.

“Tell him,” Francesco said. “Perhaps it will grant you peace.”

Lorenzo blinked, and he was gone. “He _was _there,” he insisted.

“All right, yes, he was there,” Piero said, clearly just humoring him. “Who _is_ this Francesco, anyway? You keep talking to him.”

Lorenzo looked at him again, gazing into the eyes that were so like Clarice’s. Was it really so long ago that Lorenzo had held him in his arms as an infant? He was almost a man now, but Lorenzo could swear that his christening was yesterday.

He could swear it was yesterday. Francesco dressed in red rather than his usual gloomy green, looking like the sun itself as he beamed at Lorenzo, love and pride all over his face, pride that Lorenzo was trusting him with such an important role in his son’s life. The way Francesco had looked up from the baptismal font, searching for Lorenzo, the way he’d smiled again when their eyes met.

How much it had warmed Lorenzo’s heart, seeing him up there with his son. Seeing the tender little kiss he gave Piero’s tiny hand during the feast afterwards. Piero looking up at him with big, curious eyes, like he already knew this person was someone he was going to have a lifelong connection with. Or so Lorenzo had thought at the time.

_There were not many things I truly loved in my life, but that child was one of them._

Lorenzo cleared his throat, though his voice still came out hoarse and weak. “Francesco de’ Pazzi.”

Piero frowned. “Francesco de’ Pazzi? Your brother’s murderer?”

_Your brother, _not _my uncle. _Because Francesco had taken Giuliano from them before Piero even had a chance to really know him. For Piero, Giuliano was just a story.

And Francesco was even less than that. Half-erased, with only the memory of his final day living on and not all the days before that. Not all the hundreds of days when he was good and kind and warm. Not the day he baptized Piero.

_Damnatio memoriae._

“He was my best friend,” Lorenzo whispered.

“Francesco de’ Pazzi?” Piero was looking at him like he’d lost his mind. “He was your best friend?”

“Yes.”

“But he killed your brother and tried to kill you,” Piero said in the tone of someone trying to explain something simple to a particularly obstinate toddler.

“Before that,” Lorenzo said. “Before everything went wrong between us. He was my best friend. I loved him. More than almost anything else in the world. And he was…” He took a shaky breath. “He was your godfather.”

“You’re confused, Father,” Piero said. “Giuliano was my godfather.”

“No. That’s a lie. It was Francesco,” Lorenzo said. “I know you think this is the addled rambling of a man on his deathbed, but it’s the truth. Ask Sandro, he was there at your christening. He saw Francesco holding you over the baptismal font.”

Piero stared at him, disbelief and shock mixing on his face. “My godfather—my godfather is Francesco de’ Pazzi?”

“Yes,” Lorenzo said softly.

“If that’s really true—”

“It is.”

“—why did you lie to me all these years?”

“Because I was ashamed,” Lorenzo said. “I was ashamed that I trusted him. I was ashamed that I loved him. He murdered my brother right in front of me, I couldn’t—my happy memories of him were disgusting to me, I couldn’t bear to dwell on them. So I lied to you about who your godfather was, and your mother and grandmother, everyone else all went along with it.”

He could see Piero’s hands shaking where they rested in his lap, so he reached out and gently covered them with his own. “I’m sorry to burden you with this knowledge,” he said. “But I must unburden myself of it so that I can die peacefully.”

Piero was crying now. “Why?” he said, hurt and angry and betrayed all at once. “How could you have chosen a monster as my godfather?”

Lorenzo smiled faintly. “He wasn’t always a monster,” he said. It was the first time he’d acknowledged it, even to himself, since that day in April. The first time he’d acknowledged that the Francesco who’d mercilessly stabbed Giuliano over and over again wasn’t the only one who’d ever existed. It was easier, so much easier, to pretend that he was, to pretend that all Lorenzo’s happy memories of him were lies, that Francesco had been faking friendship for all of it, just biding his time until the right moment to reveal his true villainous nature. That he’d been rotten to the core from the day he was born.

But he hadn’t been. He had been good, once. As hard as it was to admit, as painful as it was to remember, he had been good.

“He wasn’t always a monster,” Lorenzo repeated. “And he did love you. I know he did.”

Was he talking to Piero or to himself?

Piero yanked his hands out of his grasp. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he said heatedly. “Are you saying you _forgive _him?”

“No. I don’t forgive him, not for Giuliano. I don’t think I ever can,” Lorenzo said. “I’m merely telling you the truth. The truth is an important thing, Piero, and I’ve twisted it and hidden it far too many times in my life.”

Piero was always the first to throw a tantrum or lose his temper, so unlike either of his parents. So like his godfather, both the false one and the true one. But perhaps he thought Lorenzo was too weak for an argument right now, for he simply gave him one last angry look and left the room.

Lorenzo could have sworn he saw Francesco reaching for him, tears in his eyes, as he stormed out the door and slammed it shut.

“There,” Lorenzo told the empty room. “I’ve done it. Will you leave me in peace now?”

There was no response. But his soul felt a little lighter.

**Author's Note:**

> The belief that souls would wander in the afterlife if their bodies weren't buried properly is technically from ancient Greco-Roman culture and I don't know if there's a similar idea in Renaissance Christianity or what, but it felt right for this fic. anyway prayer circle for Ghost Francesco in season 3!!!


End file.
